17 Things I Believe, Circa 2023

Biased but mostly evidence-based opinions on management and life

I have taught an introduction to organizational behavior class for more than 30 years-- to both undergraduate and graduate students.?I first taught it at The University of Michigan to undergraduates when I was doctoral student in 1980. And I've taught an ever-evolving version of the class almost every year since I landed at Stanford in 1983.?

For years, the last day of class, especially the final 20 minutes or so, felt awkward and forced as I struggled to look back on what the class had learned, provide some closure, and end on an upbeat note.?About 20 years ago, I experimented with an ending ritual: I passed out a list of 12 things that I believe, made a brief comment about each one, and thanked the class for their efforts and for putting up with my quirks and imperfections. The list contained many opinions that were related to the class. But they also drew on other work I hadn't mentioned in class and my general perspective on life.

It worked and it still does. The students like it and it feels authentic. I’ve fiddled with different versions of this list over the years—items come and go, it gets longer and shorter, but it still feels like a useful ritual for wrapping up the class.?About fifteen years ago, I put it on my old?Work Matters blog?and people seemed to like it there too – I have continued to tweak the list and update the links that explain my opinions in more detail.?This post offers the latest "Things I Believe" list, updated at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year. (FYI: my rarely updated Work Matters blog endures at?www.bobsutton.org?and my “All Things Bob Sutton” site is at?www.bobsutton.net).

As with each time I've revised this list, doing so forced me to think about what is important enough to remain, what I feel compelled to add, and what I best subtract to make room for new stuff (I did cheat a bit and expanded it from 15 to 17 things this time). Here is the current list—each but the last one has a link if you want to dig into it further.?I hope you like it. And I would love to hear your reactions, suggestions, and critiques.?

1. Sometimes?the best management is no management at all?-- first do no harm!

2. The best leaders have?“the attitude of wisdom,”?the confidence to act on their convictions and the humility to keep searching for (and acting on) evidence that they are wrong.

3. Indifference is as important as passion.

4. The best leaders?know what it feels like to work for them.?They overcome the urge to focus attention on powerful superiors rather than their followers. They also resist the temptation to believe and reward those who butter them up with flattering bullshit (And make it safe for followers to tell them uncomfortable truths).

5.?Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.

6.?Fear the?clusterfuck?(or “clusterfug”)--those debacles and disasters caused by a deadly brew of illusion, impatience, and incompetence that afflicts too many decision-makers, especially those in powerful, confident, and prestigious groups.

7.?Big teams suck.?

8.?George Carlin was right.?Too many people behave as if “my shit is stuff, and your stuff is shit.”?It creates a lot of unnecessary friction and frustration.

9. Hierarchy is good. Hierarchy is essential. And less isn't always better.?Giving people orders, watching them work, and making decisions are things that ought to be done with care, caution, and compassion. But organizations and teams need hierarchy (and other bureaucratic trappings) to function.

10.?If you are a winner and an asshole, you are still a loser?in my book.?Because you are harming so many other people in your lust to build something, make money, or dominate that competition.

11.?Kurt Vonnegut was right.??It is often more constructive to tell yourself "I have enough" than to keep asking how you can get more and more and more. I don't believe that people who die with the most money, fancy stuff, power, or prestige win the game of life.

12. The best teams and organizations are constrained by shared mindsets, a few simple beliefs about what "sacred" and "taboo" that people talk about, hold each other accountable for, and that guides actions. I encountered a good example at Amazon in 2014. I asked a diverse audience of 60 or so employees: "what is sacred and taboo here?" In unison, they sung, "the customers is sacred, wasting money is taboo." Just last week, in 2023, I was talking to an Amazon VP, and asked her the same question, and within in seconds, she repeated the same answers I had heard nine years earlier.

That's why (Huggy) Hayagreeva Rao and I argue that scaling is about spreading a mindset, not just a footprint. In addition, wise leaders know that once effective mindsets sometimes need to change. At Microsoft, for example, I have admired how Satya Nadella has shifted the mindset from celebrating "know it alls" to "learn it alls."

13. The best leaders think and act as trustees of their employees' and customers' time. They are "friction fixers" who hold themselves and others' responsible for making the right things easier and the wrong things harder. That might mean, for example, reducing friction by eliminating and revamping meetings. Or it might mean injecting more friction to cement social bonds or to do the hard and frustrating work required for creativity. As comedian Jerry Seinfeld told the Harvard Business Review, when it comes to writing comedy, "If you're efficient, you are doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way."

14.?"Am I a success or a failure?"?is not a very useful question.?It is better to ask “what am I learning.”

15.?Life is always going to be a bit messy, especially if you are doing something interesting and new.?Try to create as much simplicity and clarity as you can, but?embrace (and enjoy) the inevitable confusion and messiness too.

16. Not everything worth doing is worth doing well. Strategic mediocrity on the many tasks that are required but not important can save time to focus on what matters most. And there are even times when strategic or creative incompetence is best of for all concerned. As I wrote in the forward to the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Peter Principle, "Peter believed that doing things badly, intentionally, and publicly" could help employees avoid rising to their level of incompetence, or as he called it "final placement."

I made a related argument in Good Boss, Bad Boss:

“Creative incompetence must be used with great care, but it is something that every good boss keeps in his or her tool kit. If you are a boss, ask yourself: Are there required (but irrelevant) procedures your people ought to perform in less time-consuming and more half-assed ways? Are there boring or demeaning chores that keep them from doing exciting and more important things? Also consider if your willingness to do low-priority and downright trivial tasks enables other bosses and teams to devote their full attention to more intriguing and crucial challenges. Are there things you are known for doing willingly and well that sap time from work that is more important to your people, your organization, and your own career? For example, do you seem to lead every time-sucking but insignificant task force and organize every holiday party (because no one else will or they always screw it up)? Are you entertaining a constant parade of visitors whom other bosses don’t believe are worth wasting time with? If you can’t wiggle out of such chores, perhaps it is time for a bit of creative incompetence.”

The Peter Principle argues that such strategic or "creative incompetence" was among the best ways "to build organizations filled with competent people." ?

17.?Jimmy Maloney was right. Work is an overrated activity.??

Here is the background--which I always tell my class.

About 20 years ago, I spent many of my weekends and vacations racing sailboats with my boyhood friend Jimmy Maloney. He had a serious and stressful job, but was making good money. He and his wife Loretta still found a lot of time to spend with each other and their three young kids. But Jimmy and Loretta felt oppressed by the rat race. And at the strangest moments--10 seconds before the start of a race, during complicated maneuvers such as tacks or jibes, or even the middle of a capsize-- Jimmy would start bellowing "work is overrated" or "we are all suckers, most people wouldn't work if they had a choice." It wasn't just hollow talk. Jim and Loretta quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a sailboat, and cruised with their kids for a couple years (Loretta is a schoolteacher, and she was very disciplined about teaching each kid the material required by their California school district). The family eventually landed in New Zealand, where they raised their kids. They work just enough to support a modest but healthy life. All three kids grew up to be great sailors too. In fact, their daughter Alex won a silver medal in the 2016 Olympics and their son Andy sailed on the New Zealand boat that won the America's Cup in 2017.

I like to end my class with that story because I am so focused on the workplace in my writings and research, and the students I teach at Stanford are such extreme overachievers, that it is useful to remind them (and myself), as Jimmy would put it, that "work is an overrated activity."

P.S. I put my final exam question on the course outline, so students know it from the first day?"Design the ideal organization. Use course concepts to defend your answer."?The quality, range, and imagination of these papers often stuns and delights me.

I am an organizational psychologist and Stanford professor who studies and writes about leadership, organizational change, navigating organizational life, leading at scale, and the curse and beauty of organizational friction. Follow me @work_matters on Twitter and visit my?website?and posts on?LinkedIn.

I have authored or co-authored eight books. My latest book is?The Friction Project and will be published in early 2024. It is the culmination of a seven year learning adventure with Huggy Rao.?Before that, we published?Scaling Up Excellence. ?While I have spent most of my career studying and teaching other topics, for better or worse, I am best known for The No Asshole Rule -- and have come to accept, and laugh, when people call me "the asshole guy."